


Speechless

by occasionalwriter



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Stiles, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapped Stiles, Minor Violence, Mute Stiles, Pack Feels, Stilinski Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:58:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/occasionalwriter/pseuds/occasionalwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hadn’t spoken for three weeks. For the first two weeks of that he wouldn’t even make eye contact and when he did finally hook eyes with Scott for the first time it almost made him break down. Scott never thought that he’d be that relieved just to see Stiles look up at him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speechless

He hadn’t spoken for three weeks. For the first two weeks of that he wouldn’t even make eye contact and when he did finally hook eyes with Scott for the first time it almost made him break down. Scott never thought that he’d be that relieved just to see Stiles look up at him.

They’d found him strung up in a warehouse with a rope around his neck and the second they pushed in the door, he dropped. If Scott had been the only one there, Stiles would probably be dead because Scott had frozen in fear one step inside the doorframe. Derek was shoving past him, lifting Stiles up and cutting the rope with his claw all in one motion. That had Scott running over too and they were lowering him to the ground.

His neck was ringed with angry red, the rope short enough that the fall hadn’t broken his neck and killed him immediately but it was rough enough to leave behind dozens of little scratches letting out just a few drops of blood. They could both tell that it was starting to bruise, and they were going to be deep and last for a long time.

Stiles’ eyes were bloodshot and hazy but he was conscious enough to slap his hand around, trying to get a grip on Scott’s arm from where he was squatting down on one of his sides. Scott’s eyes flying all over to see if there were any other injuries and Derek was shaking his shoulder just a little bit every time he started to fall asleep.

“Come on Stiles, talk to us. Please, say something.” Scott was saying, “We have to get you out of here but you need to say something.”

Stiles’ mouth opens a little bit and he tries to force out a sound. All that results is a little croak, a little huff of air with some sort of word trying to be fabricated without any outcome. Scott and Derek’s eyes meet over top of him and then he feels one of Scott’s arms sliding under his knees and the other sliding under his back.

“Just hold on.” Derek says, “There’s still hunters. Isaac and Kira are holding them off but we might have a little bit of a struggle on the way out. So just hold on.”

There isn’t a response, not that Derek was expecting one, but Stiles sags a little bit more into Scott’s chest. One of his hands goes to grip the front of Scott’s shirt, holding on with white knuckles as his other arm is uselessly hanging wedged underneath the arm Scott has holding under his back.

Stiles can hear Scott say something about Lydia getting the car as close as she could, and then Derek is talking about Allison but that turns into a muddled mess. Stiles is about 99% sure that not being able to hear is a bad thing but he can’t dwell on it for too long because he’s passing out as soon as they get through the door that had tripped the wire nearly killing him.

“Scott, he’s passed out.” Derek says, leading Scott out of the basement and up to where he could hear Isaac and Kira handcuffing hunters around the room while trying to watch their backs for the ones who seemed to keep materializing. 

Scott looks down and shakes the limp body in his arm just long enough to make sure that Stiles is still alive before there’s a hunter flying at them from the side. Derek gets him knocked down, pinning him to the ground and then growling at Scott to tell him there was one coming from the other side. Scott barely has time to set Stiles down before he’s fighting his own battle.

“We need more people!” Isaac yells, battling the two hunters surrounding him. One was handcuffed to the pipe on the wall behind her but she was still managing to get a few good kicks landed on Isaac every time that he so much as turned to glance another way.

Scott had just subdued the one that attacked him when Lydia is making her entrance, the twins trailing behind her. “I called in reinforcements.”

Aiden and Ethan are immediately helping out, going wherever needed and the two extra sets of eyes and claws allows them to finally get the upper hand. Then, Scott is going to Stiles and lifting him up once more before they’re headed back out to the car Lydia had managed to get just a few steps away from the entrance.

After piling into the suburban, Allison was in the driver’s seat and she was speeding off towards Derek’s house, glancing at the pile of flesh that was Stiles lying across the back seat. “Jesus Christ, what happened down there when you two went down?”

“It tripped a wire or something.” Derek explains, “They had a noose around his neck and I think it knocked whatever he was standing on out from under him. We’re lucky that we caught them off guard because they would’ve had people down there ready to fight us otherwise. They wanted us to trip it and then get sloppy trying to get to him while fighting them.”

“His voice sounded wrecked.” Scott adds.

“That’s not good.” Lydia is pursing her lips, studying his neck by standing up from her seat in the far back row of the car. Aiden and Isaac were sitting in the trunk space and were trying to get a look but they didn’t have the angle so Lydia was shoving them back for getting in her space.

“He’s fine though.” Kira says, “I mean, he’s physically fine aside from that.”

“Hopefully it didn’t ruin his vocal chords though.” Allison says, pulling into the Hale driveway and flooring it down the gravel path. That earned a glare from both Lydia and Scott which had her putting a hand up in surrender before telling them, “I’m just covering the bases.”

After getting Stiles inside and up to one of the bedrooms one of them was on constant watch while he slept until about four hours later when he sat up abruptly. Lydia was the one in there at the time and she stood up from her spot at the desk chair, putting one knee on the bed as she leaned toward him, grabbing his shoulders when his eyes darted around the room nervously.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. It’s just me, okay?” Lydia smiles at him when his eyes ghost over his face but then he’s laying back down and her hands fall off of his shoulders, “Stiles? Are you okay?”

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t twitch or look at her, and it has her calling Scott up. He gets there in four seconds flat and is going to the opposite side of the bed as Lydia, leaning over Stiles with a smile plastered on his face. Then Scott is, holding onto his shoulder and shaking it just a little bit, “Stiles? Are you alright? Talk to us.”

Another lack of response has Lydia and Scott looking at each other in the same worried way that Scott and Derek had at the warehouse. Usually, if Stiles was in a normal mental state, he’d tell them to stop worrying and get out of his personal space. The fact that he doesn’t has the two of them stepping to the side and discussing him like a patient in a hospital.

“Just… I don’t know. Get him something to eat or drink.” Lydia instructs, “He’s freaked out and probably doesn’t know how to react right now. We just need to give him some time.”

That time stretches on. And on. And on. They take turns forcing him to eat and drink and every so often Scott will get him into the bathroom to shower and wash his hair. Derek’s been the lucky one to force him down onto the toilet three times a day because he was the only one who thought about that little fact when Stiles was making tiny, aborted motions on the bed after they’d been making him drink water bottle after water bottle.

Deaton had come over every other day since it’d happened, watching the way that the bruises set in and turned dark blue and purple the first couple days. Then, they started fading into the yellows and greens of healing and Deaton still said that there wasn’t anything else wrong with him, nothing else that should be keeping him from interacting with them at all.

The only thing that he prescribed was for them to stay with him, someone to be there for the moment he did snap out of it. That wasn’t any different than what they were initially going to do but the little bit of support from a doctor had them feeling just that much more confident. The first night Scott was in there, because Scott refused to leave the house, and he didn’t get a wink of sleep that night because he was too busy staring at him the entire time, waiting for any shift. 

He’d been lying flat on his back when they put him down, and he hadn’t moved an inch on his own since they’d gathered him. Derek had practically forced Scott down onto the couch the next morning saying that he was of no use and then he was sitting there, staring at Stiles.

The first time that he’d may eye contact, it was after Scott had held the back of his head up enough to make him drink some more of his water. His eyes traveled from the hand holding the water all the way up his arm and to his eyes. Scott was busy staring at how much water he was tipping into Stiles’ mouth to notice until he was pulling it away. 

“Stiles.” He breathed. He didn’t say a word, didn’t do anything more than keep eye contact, but it gave Scott the little bit of hope to believe that they were doing something right. That it was just taking time. Scott lowered him back down onto his pillow and grabbed a hold of his arm, “It’s going to be okay.”

Two days after that it’s Derek who’s in the room with him. He’d propped Stiles up on some pillows so he didn’t get too many aches and pains from lying in the same position. When Derek moved to head down to the kitchen, he felt a hand brush his arm. He turned around with absolute dread thinking that Stiles was having a seizure or something equally violent. Instead, he found Stiles’ hand twitching toward the arm that was levering him off of the bed and his eyes latched onto Derek’s face. Derek moved carefully to sit back down and he took a hold of the hand resting next to his.

“You with me?”

A blink and Derek was nodding.

“Okay, are you hurting?”

Two blinks and Derek thought they had figured out a simple little system.

“Hungry?”

Two blinks again.

“Want to get out of this bed?”

One very dramatic blink and Derek was smirking a little bit at the amount of assertiveness that he’d managed to put into closing and reopening his eyes. Derek reached forward a little bit more and he was scooping Stiles up.

“Isaac’s downstairs, the rest of the pack will be here once school is over but he’s taking a day off to help me with you, they’ve been taking turns. Your dad is going to come over and visit too. He’ll be glad to see that you’re aware of what’s going on.”

A solid blink and Derek had Stiles downstairs and he was putting him on the recliner, blatantly ignoring Isaac’s stare from where he’s sprawled out on the couch and had been watching some weird independent film on Netflix.

Derek gets him situated and then asks, “Water?”

Two blinks and his eyes turn to the screen instead of Derek which has Isaac finally speaking up, “What’s going on?”

“He’s aware, mostly I think.” Derek glances back to Stiles who has found his eyes again and he gives a blink of agreement, “Yeah, he’s aware. One blink for yes and two for no.”

Isaac is standing up and moving next to Derek, right in Stiles line of sight so he wouldn’t have to move his head to see him, “Can you talk?”

Stiles doesn’t answer. His eyes turn back to the TV and it has Isaac and Derek sending each other confused glances before Derek is asking, “Stiles? Come on, just answer us. Okay?”

Resolutely refusing to so much as glance at them has Isaac moving toward him and putting a hand on either side of his head, “Okay then. Yes or no. Are you okay?”

Two blinks and Derek is surging forward as well, putting his hands all over Stiles to see if there’s pain that he can siphon off but when he comes up empty he’s asking, “Physical pain?”

No.

“Want to just watch Netflix?” Isaac asks.

Yes.

When the rest of the pack shows up a few hours later they all take a few seconds to recognize that it’s Stiles downstairs in the chair, he’s the one who Isaac is rambling on to without ever pausing to listen for an answer. Scott moves over toward him, “Stiles?”

One blink.

“He knows you’re there.” Isaac says, watching them, “One blink is yes and two is no. He’s not okay but he’s not in physical pain. He doesn’t answer if we ask if he can talk so we’ve stopped asking. He can’t move though, so even though there isn’t any pain there’s still something blocking him from being able to move.”

“That’s a lot to find out in one day.” Lydia says, “Good job.”

“He reached for Derek when Derek was up there and was about to get up off the bed. Then he was actually looking at him and making eye contact so Derek started asking questions. He said he wanted to come down so Derek brought him here and we’ve been watching House of Cards for a few hours. Derek went out on a run, he was having some cabin fever.” 

Scott went and sat on the armrest of the chair, reaching out to turn Stiles’ head toward him and asking, “Do you want Deaton to come take another look at you? He hasn’t come for a few days.”

Two blinks.

“Do you think he knows what’s going on with you?” Scott asks.

Two blinks.

“Do you know what’s going on with you?” Lydia asks, standing right behind Scott.

Three blinks. 

“Three blinks?” Scott asks, “What’s that?” he focuses on Stiles and asks, “Is it maybe?”

One blink and they all see Scott give himself a mental pat on the back.

Allison walks by and slides her hand through Stiles’ hair, her eyes cringing a little bit as she says, “I think Scott needs to help you with another shower.”

One very obvious blink and Scott is giving his shoulder a squeeze, “Now?”

Another blink and Scott is standing up and lifting Stiles with him. 

Once the three week mark hits Stiles is starting to move just a little bit. His fingers move all the time, possibly compensating for the lack of movement in the rest of his body, and they drum against whatever surface they’re resting on. His feet twitch every so often but there’s no controlled movement yet.

His head can turn a little bit too, just enough to get their attention if he wants someone to ask him any of the usual questions. Occasionally he’ll flip it far enough when he’s lying down that he’s looking at the person next to him on the bed. That made Kira jump in surprise the first time it happened to her and she swore that his lip quirked up in a smile but it faded just as fast.

A month after they’d gotten him, a month of no school and no talking, he had enough control to move his arms. That meant he was finally able to feed himself, he was finally able to write which had all of them sitting on the bed as Lydia shoved a pen in one hand and put the notebook on his lap.

Isaac had taken up residence on one side of him, Scott on the other, and Derek was standing off to the side, trying to figure out why this felt so wrong to be doing. Lydia, Kira, and Allison were taking up the foot of the bed. When Stiles hand twitched around the pen, Scott was readjusting it in his grip. When his other arm moved forward and knocked the notebook away, Allison was putting it back.

All of them were so busy focusing on his hands that they didn’t notice his repetition of two blinks, over and over again, until a tear slipped and fell onto the paper. All of them were flipping their gazes to his face and he shoved the notebook off of his lap and onto the floor, his other hand squeezing the pen until his knuckles turned white and Scott was prying his fist open to get it before it exploded.

“He doesn’t want to.” Scott says, “Just leave him be, we need to just leave him be. He’ll write when he’s ready.”

His dad comes the next day and the rest of them give him privacy in the bedroom with Stiles. He pulls the desk chair up next to the bed where Stiles is in his now usual position of three pillows shoved behind him and the blanket pulled up over his legs. 

“Stiles, son, I know they said you didn’t want to write. I know you don’t want to tell us why you’re not talking, but you have to at least promise me you’re not in any pain. Can you promise me that?”

A blink and the Sheriff relaxes a little bit.

“Are you going to talk any time soon?”

Three blinks and his shoulders droop some more but this time in defeat.

“Will you tell us why you won’t talk?”

One slow, unsure blink has the Sheriff leaning forward and grabbing a hold of one of Stiles’ hands.

“Do you want paper?”

An even less sure blink, which shocked the Sheriff because he never knew that you’d be able to tell someone’s hesitations based on how they were blinking. He never thought that the only way his only son would communicate would be with his eyes. He wished this wasn’t how it was.

He gently places the notebook on his lap, putting the pen in his hand and then sitting back, not wanting to look like he was pressuring him. Stiles stabs at the paper a few times, he makes senseless marks and gets control of his fine motor movement. Then he’s scrawling out a few things, scribbling over them in anger before trying again to word it the correct way.

“You don’t have to do it.” His dad says, “You can take all of the time you need.”

Stiles grip is white knuckled again, but he’s still holding the tip of the pen to the paper and he starts writing quicker. A half a minute or so later and he’s setting the pen down carefully next to him after pressing the end to put the tip in. He holds the notebook out to his dad who is almost nervous to read what he wrote.

Stiles watches as his eyes read over it quickly. Then he goes back to the top and slows down, his eyebrows creasing as he thinks through what he’s reading. After a few more times, he sets it down on the bed and looks up to Stiles, smiling just a little bit.

“It’s your decision.” He says, “You don’t have to talk, you never have to talk if you don’t want to but you still have to stay with us. Okay? You have to know that even if you’re not talking, you’ve still got a crew of us listening to you.”

That has Stiles gesturing him forward with his arms and the two are wrapping their arms around each other in a hug. His dad rubs his back a few times before letting him back down and readjusting the blanket over his lap, “I won’t show this to them. If you want to tell them later, you can write it for them, but this can just stay between us if you want for now.”

One blink.

“I’ve got to go back to work but I’ll send up someone because I can tell you need to go to the bathroom and that is not going to be my job. Your legs will be back in working order soon and I cannot wait for that moment.”

Another quirk of the lips and his dad is leaving. Isaac comes up a few minutes later and glares at Stiles saying, “Why am I on bathroom duty today? It’s my day off. Derek just went out to get the mail.”

Stiles levels an equally as rude glare back and Isaac is rolling his eyes before hefting him up with a hand around his waist with his other hand pulling Stiles’ arm over his shoulders. He then watches as Stiles’ feet struggle to find purchase on the floor. When they get settled Stiles is nodding and Isaac is helping him toward the bathroom across the hall.

Once Isaac sits Stiles back on the bed he asks, “Downstairs?”

One blink and Isaac is pulling him back up again, “Do you want to practice walking?”

Stiles looks at him for a few seconds before giving him a blink that makes Isaac smile. He gets them down to the living room and then lowers Stiles onto the couch before moving the coffee table out of the way and against the wall. Derek walks in then and nods at Isaac in recognition of what they were doing. He goes to pull Stiles up and gets him solid on his feet before taking a step away.

Stiles hand is wrapped tight around his forearm though and it doesn’t look like he’s going to be letting go any time soon. Isaac is on his other side and giving Stiles a reassuring nod. His legs give out for just a second and it has the other two pulling him straight again.

“It’s like we’re a couple teaching our toddler to walk.” Isaac jokes.

That has Stiles glaring at him which makes the other two laugh a little bit and Derek nod in encouragement, “Come on Stiles, just move your legs forward.”

He gets the left one moving forward and settled onto the ground before shifting his weight forward, his other foot goes to follow and he grunts in annoyance when it takes longer for that one to stop twitching. He manages to make it around the room a couple times, it takes him almost five minutes to do that little but it’s the most he’s done, by almost double. Derek catches him when his legs give out the final time and shuffles him over to the chair that he’d commandeered as his own since he’d been practically living in the living room.

“That was good.” Isaac says, bringing some water over to him and keeping his hand on it until Stiles’ hand stops shaking.

Stiles shakes his head a little bit before taking a few swigs of the water bottle, then he’s gesturing to the notebook that was sitting on the dining room table a little bit away from them. Derek glances over to where it’s sitting and then back to Stiles, “You want that?”

Stiles nods and Isaac is practically flying over to the table to grab it and throw it into Stiles’ hands. He then realizes that he forgot the pen and is running back to get that and shoving it at him. Stiles taps again, leaving a few marks to check the pen before he’s starting to write. Derek and Isaac both give him a little bit of space to take as much time as he needs.

After what feels like forever, he’s throwing the pen at Isaac who jolts up at the same time as Derek. They get over to him and he turns the notebook so they can both read it at the face time. Both of them have a hand on it to steady it as they read over what he wrote, glancing up at him just like his dad had before they read over it a second time.

“Stiles…” Isaac says, voice pitying. Stiles shakes his head frantically at that and Isaac smiles and squeezes his shoulder, “We got it. It’s okay. Want us to tell the pack?”

Stiles grabs the notebook again and chicken scratches a quick note that Derek reads and recites to Isaac, “He wants to tell Scott, but we can tell the rest of them once he’s done with that.”

“More House of Cards?” Isaac asks. When Stiles nods he flops down on the couch and grabs the remote, “I can’t believe he killed Russo, I actually liked that asshole and now he’s dead. Is it bad that I like Underwood? Maybe it’s because we weren’t tricked into thinking he was going to be a good guy. I hate being tricked into thinking that they’re going to be nice, shows that do that are the worst.”

Stiles had gotten used to it, used to Isaac just running his mouth with whatever he was thinking whenever they took breaks in a show. Derek took his seat in the other chair and crumples up one of the pieces of paper to throw at Isaac to get him to shut up, “We know what happened. We all watched it.”

“I’m just saying!” Isaac exclaims, “Is he going to kill another person? Is this going to be a serial killer kind of thing or more of just a sadistic once kind of thing?”

Derek is about to tell him to shut up when he notices that Stiles is smiling at the running commentary, it makes Derek relax back into the chair a little bit and he motions for Isaac to turn the volume up. “Scott should be here soon.”

Scott gives Stiles one of the biggest bear hugs he’d ever gotten after reading Stiles’ note as soon as he gets there. He then shoves him over so he can share the seat despite the fact that Isaac is stretching just to take up as much room as possible on the couch. It doesn’t seem to bother Stiles at all though and he actually ends up curling into Scott once they get situated.

It takes a while, another month of the pack helping him walk around the living room, and then up the stairs, then outside. It takes a month of them throwing a tennis ball to him when they’re watching TV and a month of them not pushing him to talk. That’s when he finally speaks. It isn’t even a full word, it’s just the first half of Scott’s name and it’s because they’re attacked at the house and something is flying at his back. 

Stiles had been lounging out on the porch with Lydia sitting next to him, helping him work through some of the homework he’d missed when a there was rustling in the trees and a buzzing growing louder. The noise had the rest of the pack, including Aiden and Ethan running out and searching the tree line for what was causing the disturbance. 

Then there was fanged green and yellow creatures spilling through the trees. It had the pack running at them in half a second flat. They were tackling them to the ground, ripping their heads off and thanking god that Lydia had been forcing them to learn what she had from the Beastiary. They knew that if these three foot tall creatures got a grip on them, and their short little talons got imbedded into their skin, it was the equivalent of a straight shot of rattlesnake poison to a human’s heart.

Stiles had hesitated on the porch as Lydia went forward with a baseball bat that someone had brought out of the house and given to her. Allison was shooting like mad at them, hitting every single one she aimed at. Stiles couldn’t though, he couldn’t bring himself to go fight because he was hardly walking around without tripping let alone run and dodge creepy little fanged things.

He watched instead. It lasted for almost fifteen minutes, a few hollers and instructions being thrown around as they worked in an impressive synchronicity. He watched as Scott turned his back on one of the final few to rip one off of Kira where it had just landed on her shoulder. The one was going straight for his neck and it had its talons out and ready to go. Stiles yelled then, his vocal chords flaring up with fire like pain and he was grabbing at his throat with one hand while watching Scott flip and kill the one that was going to kill him.

Everyone else seemed to have a handle, no one was hurt except a few slowly healing scratches and Scott had turned to stare in awe at Stiles as soon as he’d made sure everyone was alright. He wasn’t sure if anyone else had realized it was Stiles that had spoken so he was the one to get back to him first. He put his hands on Stiles’ shoulders as he stood in front of him.

“Stiles.” He gasped, “Oh my god.”

Stiles had a tiny smile before it was dropping back down to a grim line that had Scott putting his worried face back on and moving Stiles back inside. The rest of the pack let the two go, cleaning up the mess around them and quietly asking why Scott had looked like he’d seen a second sun in the sky.

Stiles fell onto the chair then, hand still on his throat while the other one went down to steady himself on the chair. Scott was kneeling in front of him, hands on his knees and eyes staring at Stiles like he was supposed to go on in a fifteen minutes explanation of what happened.

“Are you talking now?”

A shake of the head had Scott’s face dropping and Stiles looking at him sadly, “It hurts.”

Scott pulls the hand that Stiles’ hand has on his neck away and then puts his free one up to see just how much pain there is, “Talk.”

“Scott.” Stiles says, sounding a little bit like he was telling a child that there wasn’t any cookies left even after they’d been promised one for dessert.

The flare of pain in Scott’s arm has him holding just a little firmer to make sure that he pulls every last bit out, “Shit Stiles. You need a doctor. A real doctor.”

Stiles starts shaking his head frantically back and forth, gesturing for the notebook. Scott looks a little defeated when he picks it up and hands it over to him. He watches as Stiles writes, watches him scrawl as fast as he can so he doesn’t keep Scott waiting.

“You don’t know it’s not a medical thing.” Scott says, only reading the first line. Stiles motions for him to keep reading and Scott goes back to reading. “Stiles, why didn’t you tell us? All you said when you told us was that you’d screamed so much it hurt. I didn’t know it  
was still hurting. How’d they do it? They weren’t witches, that means it has to be physical.”

Stiles writes a little bit more and Scott says, “I… if you don’t know for sure can I at least have my mom look? Can she see if there’s something that could be fixed?”

Derek walks in with the rest of the pack trailing behind and they all stop to look at where Stiles is writing again, Scott waiting very impatiently for him to finish. The others jolt back into action when Isaac pushes Allison forward, toward the upstairs to try and get the rest of them to leave Scott and Stiles in privacy.

Derek stays down there with them though and Scott finishes reading his most recent note. Once he’s finished he looks up to Derek and says, “It hurts when he talks. He says it feels like his throats on fire. I pulled the pain and it’s a lot. He says it’s not physical though, because they didn’t do anything that would’ve caused that…”

“Except try and hang him!” Derek interrupts.

“Except that.” Scott agrees, “But it’s like the paralysis, it took time for him to get control of his limbs again, for him to even be able to look at it again. It just is now, it’s just the new normal.”

“His paralysis healed, he’s walking now, so maybe the pain is too.”

Stiles shrugs a little bit when Scott looks at him for an answer and Derek walks a little closer so Stiles didn’t have to keep flipping his head between the two of them, “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out. If you can’t talk, you can’t talk. If it heals like the rest of you then great. Don’t worry.”

Scott smiles at him, that happy little reassuring smile that he loved to give to everyone. He pulled Stiles in for a quick hug and mutters, “Derek’s right. It’ll be okay. It’s just a voice.”

“Just a voice.” Derek repeats. “Besides, Isaac is getting better at running commentary and I don’t think he wants you to take that away quite yet.”

“I heard that!” Isaac yells down as he starts coming down the stairs, “That’s just rude, and makes me sound like an insensitive prick.”

A blink.

“You asshole!” Isaac says after a beat of silence, pointing an accusing finger at Stiles and then bursting into laughter, “You’re an asshole without even saying anything!”

The rest of the pack comes down as Isaac finds his place back on the couch. The others watch as he makes himself comfortable and then points the remote at the screen, immediately going to Netflix and clicking on House of Cards, “Where were we? Zoe just died right?”

He looked at the other three who were gaping at him a little bit and then he was pushing to his feet, grabbing Stiles’ arm and yanking him over to the couch, setting him on the middle cushion, “Scott wants to cuddle you and I want to be able to ramble to you without everyone else yelling so you’re sitting between us.”

Derek sits on the chair that Stiles vacated, everyone else finding their place as well as the too long intro to the show finally ends and the actual episode begins. Isaac does ramble his way through it, Stiles listens with a little smirk, and Scott leans against Stiles, grabbing his hand instead of letting him reach for the notebook. 

“Talk, I’ll take care of the pain.”

Stiles considers it for just a minute before he derails whatever argument Isaac had been building up for five minutes with just a single sentence. Then he’s pulling his hand from Scott’s and putting it on his head instead, threading his fingers through his hair while Isaac flailed for another response that was promptly shut down by Lydia.

Isaac nudges Stiles once he’s finally done blabbing and when Stiles makes eye contact Isaac quietly asks if he’d rather not talk. When the answer is one blink, Isaac seems to get it and even though none of the others do he figures that it is the same reason that whenever he’d be close to death, the last thing he wanted to do was say anything.

That’s why he knew Stiles would probably talk sometimes in the future. It may be days or even months but Isaac was pretty sure that once Stiles got past it, once he figured out that it was up to him to stop the pain, he’d talk again.


End file.
